March 2021 - Physics-Departmental-Computing

Agenda for this morning's meeting
by David Colling 26 Mar '21

26 Mar '21

Dear All, My apologies for this being rather late but there is an agenda attached for this morning's meeting. The timings are only very rough. I would like to use the teams files as a way of storing documents for this group. So I have uploaded this agenda to that space. I have also uploaded Spencer's white paper (I hope that this is OK) and the software stack that was on the teaching machines in 2018-19 which is the last list that I had and I suspect has not changed too much. Best, david

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Membership - please check your affiliation etc
by David Colling 24 Mar '21

24 Mar '21

Dear All, The web pages for COmputing Committee are at least 5 years out of date. I was going to ask Gayle to at least update the membership so I have filled out a google spreadsheet with it in. Please can you check that I have got your role/affiliation correct before I ask her to do this. The google doc is at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zfkDhK9FQfjznn92N0e0-bBIN1U6nZEdVET… I have not had specific agenda items from anybody but a few concerns from people. Spencer Sherwin will join us to discuss Research Computing and I will put together a generic agenda for the other points so that we have room for discussion. Best, david

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Confirming time and day + items for agenda
by David Colling 23 Mar '21

23 Mar '21

Dear All, Nobody has said that Friday 11:30 means that they cannot come to the meeting so that is the time and day that we shall set. I (think that I) have added you all to an MS team. Please can you send me agenda iyems that you would like discussed. Best, david

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Departmental Computing meeting
by David Colling 23 Mar '21

23 Mar '21

Dear All, I know that we said that we would try to have a computing meeting in the middle of each term and that we are near the end of this term and so I would like to squeeze one before Easter if we can, if we cannot then soon after Easter. I have set up a doodle poll at: https://doodle.com/poll/wrzggbbdvdbnqkzw?utm_source=poll&utm_medium=link You will see that I have only put the days and that is because these meetings are traditionally at lunchtime so I am going to suggest that we schedule them 13:00->14:00. Please let me know if you have any strong objection to this and we can shift it. If you have agenda items then please let me know. I will set up a teams channel and that can also serve as a document repository. Best, david

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Re: [Physics-Departmental-Computing] confirm 3e0ebfe3ce03ab2372129f231111392a2ea57147
by Whitehouse, Dan 17 Mar '21

17 Mar '21

confirm 3e0ebfe3ce03ab2372129f231111392a2ea57147

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FW: Server management & support
by Bantges, Richard J 08 Mar '21

08 Mar '21

Dear Physics Dept People, Apologies if you’ve seen this already, but if you have servers hosted in any of the College’s data centres (DCs), then you might be interested to read and respond to Steven’s email appended below. I don’t think there are many of us in Physics that have servers hosted in the College’s DCs, but if the College’s RCS offerings aren’t providing what you currently need and you anticipate buying dedicated project servers to host in one of the DCs, then you might want to let Steven know that you might be requiring space in one of the DCs in the future. Hope everyone is doing ok and looking forward to life returning to something more normal soon. Best wishes, Rich From: Prescott-Jones, Steven <s.prescott-jones(a)imperial.ac.uk> Sent: 08 March 2021 14:59 To: Islam, Suhail A <suhail.islam(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Fayer, Simon <simon.fayer05(a)imperial.ac.uk>; White, Duncan C <d.white(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Kamara, Lloyd D <l.kamara(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Guitton, Florian L P <f.guitton(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Beeby, Morgan <m.beeby(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Zachariadis, Zacharias Ioannis <z.zachariadis(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Pietzuch, Peter R <prp(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Vincent, Peter E <p.vincent(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Bantges, Richard J <r.bantges(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Thomas, Andy D <andy.thomas(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Stephenson, Richard <r.stephenson(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Higgs, Peter J <p.higgs(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Johnson, Eric <eric.johnson(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Cantwell, Chris <c.cantwell(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Jones, William P <w.jones(a)imperial.ac.uk> Cc: Lax, Andy J <a.lax(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Darvell, Iain <i.darvell(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Frostick, Russell S <r.frostick(a)imperial.ac.uk>; Sharkey, Martin <m.sharkey(a)imperial.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Server management & support Hi Suhail/All, I wanted to provide an update on our DC capacity now I’m back in the office, the team have identified 3 racks we can repurpose by moving around existing faculty systems, they’ll need refurbishing with additional strips and switches so not available for immediate use but hopefully one of these racks should be ready within 2 weeks and the other 2 within a month. This helps us in the short term but I still have concerns about how we manage DC capacity moving forward. Ideally I’d like us to work with you all to understand your current DC footprint, capacity on your severs and future requirements. This would allow us both to forecast on future DC space required and work with vendors to look at the best platforms for your requirements moving forward. It makes sense for us to have standard offerings to meet these requirements where feasible as we get economies of scale and a quicker implementation time. To that end we’ve been looking at HP Synergy, we can get the chassis’ in place and add servers as they are needed, we can set up dedicated segregated pools per Research project as the compute, networking and storage are all software defined so you can retain the control you currently have whilst my teams could manage the hardware and the OS level in terms of monitoring, patching and security scanning etc allowing you to focus on your Research work. In this example we make better use of our DC space as we can compress the equivalent of 15 racks into 2 providing 60TB of RAM, 560 Cores and 1.4PB of vSAN. Synergy is just an example of an area we’re looking at as we cannot continue to keep expanding our Data Centre footprints and our hosting costs at the rate we are across the College, add to this currently that my teams have no access to around 80% of our DC servers so we are unable to manage capacity in any meaningful way, have no visibility of utilisation levels, whether things can be Decommissioned and just as importantly the security posture of those servers. Best regards Steve Steve Prescott-Jones Head of Infrastructure Technology & Shared Services Information & Communications Technologies I Imperial College London Level 4 | Sherfield Building London | SW7 2BX Tel: +44 (0)7845 260902 From: Prescott-Jones, Steven Sent: 27 February 2021 17:04 To: Islam, Suhail A <suhail.islam(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:suhail.islam@imperial.ac.uk>> Cc: Fayer, Simon <simon.fayer05(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:simon.fayer05@imperial.ac.uk>>; White, Duncan C <d.white(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:d.white@imperial.ac.uk>>; Kamara, Lloyd D <l.kamara(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:l.kamara@imperial.ac.uk>>; Guitton, Florian L P <f.guitton(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:f.guitton@imperial.ac.uk>>; Beeby, Morgan <m.beeby(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:m.beeby@imperial.ac.uk>>; Zachariadis, Zacharias Ioannis <z.zachariadis(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:z.zachariadis@imperial.ac.uk>>; Pietzuch, Peter R <prp(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:prp@imperial.ac.uk>>; Vincent, Peter E <p.vincent(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:p.vincent@imperial.ac.uk>>; Bantges, Richard J <r.bantges(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:r.bantges@imperial.ac.uk>>; Thomas, Andy D <andy.thomas(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:andy.thomas@imperial.ac.uk>>; Stephenson, Richard <r.stephenson(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:r.stephenson@imperial.ac.uk>>; Higgs, Peter J <p.higgs(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:p.higgs@imperial.ac.uk>>; Johnson, Eric <eric.johnson(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:eric.johnson@imperial.ac.uk>>; Cantwell, Chris <c.cantwell(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:c.cantwell@imperial.ac.uk>>; Jones, William P <w.jones(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:w.jones@imperial.ac.uk>>; Lax, Andy J <a.lax(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:a.lax@imperial.ac.uk>>; Darvell, Iain <i.darvell(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:i.darvell@imperial.ac.uk>>; Frostick, Russell S <r.frostick(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:r.frostick@imperial.ac.uk>>; Sharkey, Martin <m.sharkey(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:m.sharkey@imperial.ac.uk>> Subject: Re: Server management & support Hi Suhail, It is correct that we have limited capacity in the Data Centres which is why it is important that if kit is no longer in use or not at full capacity we are informed so that it can be decommissioned or better utilised. We do not currently have any access or view of around 80% of Imperial’s Data Centre servers so it is pretty much impossible for us to manage overall capacity effectively. We are currently undertaking a number of other activities around capacity such as: - Looking at other On Premise options for hosting - Evaluating ICT managed workloads for Cloud suitability. The aim being to migrate a third to Cloud in the next 12 months - Running HP Discovery tooling to look at the impact of replacing our servers with Hyper Converged Infrastructure. Again this would greatly reduce our DC footprint - Creating Blue prints for Cloud hosted solutions that would allow workloads that are suitable to be run in Cloud rather than On Premise. I appreciate that would bring a different model for the way research grants are spent but am more than happy to work with yourselves and the Cloud providers to find the right solutions both technically and financially on this I am out of the office now until March the 8th however am happy to discuss in more detail on my return. Best regards Steve On 27 Feb 2021, at 09:46, Islam, Suhail A <suhail.islam(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:suhail.islam@imperial.ac.uk>> wrote: Dear Steven Thank you for this information. As you mention "... we’ve been looking at our footprint in our Data Centres ..." in your email I would like to bring to your immediate attention the below please. It has been recently bought to our attention that ICT has no further capacity to host systems at either Slough or at S.K. We have not received any official emails from ICT to indicate this. Can you please confirm if this is true or not ? If this is true: We need to arrange an "emergency" meeting asap to discuss this. This is devastating news which will have an immediate impact on our current research and plans for future expansion for current and new groups. To give you an example of the immediate impact of this situation - one of the groups I am responsible for secured some £80K for computer equipment last year, for a new research project, and hired staff. Without hosting there is no point in purchasing this equipment and the implication for the proposed research ... If this is not true, then my apologies for this email. Regards Suhail ---------------------------------- Dr Suhail A Islam Centre for Integrative Systems Biology and Bioinformatics Department of Life Sciences Faculty of Natural Sciences Imperial College London London SW7 2AZ email: suhail.islam(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:suhail.islam@imperial.ac.uk> www: www.sbg.bio.ic.ac.uk<http://www.sbg.bio.ic.ac.uk> Tel: +44-(0)20-7594-5333 Fax: +44-(0)20-7594-5789 ---------------------------------- ________________________________ From: Prescott-Jones, Steven <s.prescott-jones(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:s.prescott-jones@imperial.ac.uk>> Sent: 26 February 2021 18:12 To: Fayer, Simon <simon.fayer05(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:simon.fayer05@imperial.ac.uk>>; White, Duncan C <d.white(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:d.white@imperial.ac.uk>>; Kamara, Lloyd D <l.kamara(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:l.kamara@imperial.ac.uk>>; Guitton, Florian L P <f.guitton(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:f.guitton@imperial.ac.uk>>; Islam, Suhail A <suhail.islam(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:suhail.islam@imperial.ac.uk>>; Beeby, Morgan <m.beeby(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:m.beeby@imperial.ac.uk>>; Zachariadis, Zacharias Ioannis <z.zachariadis(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:z.zachariadis@imperial.ac.uk>>; Pietzuch, Peter R <prp(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:prp@imperial.ac.uk>>; Vincent, Peter E <p.vincent(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:p.vincent@imperial.ac.uk>>; Bantges, Richard J <r.bantges(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:r.bantges@imperial.ac.uk>>; Thomas, Andy D <andy.thomas(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:andy.thomas@imperial.ac.uk>>; Stephenson, Richard <r.stephenson(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:r.stephenson@imperial.ac.uk>>; Higgs, Peter J <p.higgs(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:p.higgs@imperial.ac.uk>>; Johnson, Eric <eric.johnson(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:eric.johnson@imperial.ac.uk>>; Cantwell, Chris <c.cantwell(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:c.cantwell@imperial.ac.uk>>; Jones, William P <w.jones(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:w.jones@imperial.ac.uk>> Cc: Lax, Andy J <a.lax(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:a.lax@imperial.ac.uk>>; Darvell, Iain <i.darvell(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:i.darvell@imperial.ac.uk>>; Frostick, Russell S <r.frostick(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:r.frostick@imperial.ac.uk>> Subject: Server management & support Hello everyone, I joined Imperial late last year and Head up Infrastructure Technology. As part of ICT’s commitment to providing world class services we’ve been looking at our footprint in our Data Centres and how we can best support the wider organisation to ensure everyone is getting best use of the resources they have and have the visibility they need to ensure technical or capacity issues are identified before they impact services. To that end we’d like to offer server owners a number of services to help manage their IT estate, these include discovery tooling to help you understand the environment you are managing, vulnerability scanning to ensure your environment is secure, and monitoring so that your services are available to your users, for those of you supporting research these services can also help with gaining accreditation or certification for things like 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus or DSP Toolkit. All of the services below use agentless technology, so we would only require a login to the relevant servers with basic permissions (for some functionality there can be optional elevated permission), the overheads of these services are also very low as the majority of the scans run daily, with the monitoring collections every few minutes. Andy CC’d and his team would be more than happy to walk through the services below and set up for you, or just to trail initially if you’d prefer, so just let us know when is best for you to discuss. Device discovery, inventory and dependency mapping: Using the Device42 platform ICT can discover and inventory your infrastructure giving you a full physical and software asset list. * Physical Asset Management, by discovering your infrastructure you’ll have a complete list of hardware assets including internal components, which will help with the lifecycle management of hardware or possible audits * Software inventory will give you a complete audit of what software you have installed, which you can use to identify out of data, unused, or unlicensed software * Application dependency monitoring will monitor the servers and running applications to map what components talk to each other, which will help you understand your ecosystem and the dependencies, this data can be used to understand the impact of changes before you make them, or identify connections you didn’t know existed. Security Vulnerability By scanning your servers installed software and configurations we can identify and report on security vulnerabilities, the reports will include details of the vulnerabilities as we’ll as guidance regarding how you can address the vulnerabilities, this will allow you to act and rectify any security risks before they are exploited, this service will also highlight any missing OS and application patches so they can be applied in a timely manner. Monitoring Using ICT’s monitoring platforms we can also provide data and alerts for core server monitoring (e.g. CPU, Memory, Disk Space, etc …), allowing you to address performance or availability issues quickly and reduce the amount of downtime for your users. This data can also be used for capacity planning to allow you to understand and plan for your growth, or identify underutilised assets. Have a good weekend all. Best regards Steve Steve Prescott-Jones Head of Infrastructure Technology & Shared Services Information & Communications Technologies I Imperial College London Level 4 | Sherfield Building London | SW7 2BX Tel: +44 (0)7845 260902 Please note I will be out of the office on the following dates: 01-05/03/21

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